World masters

Congratulations to all the Canadians and especially the local skiers who participated in the World masters over the past week. I’ve become accustomed to seeing Marg Fedyna’s name at the top of the results for our local loppets, but now we can see she’s world class. Here’s a final update from Blaine Penny in Vernon, BC:

World Master’s Cup Wrap – Marg Fedyna Wins Second Gold!

The WMC wrapped up with the long distance race, which was 45 km for the men and 30 km for the women. Team MitoCanada all opted for the skate race (on Thursday) and Marg went classic (Friday).

In the skate race, the M2 group was the second last group to go so the course had seen quite a few skiers by the time we were on course. It was also the warmest day of the week and the temperatures were approaching zero. Our glide was good, but couldn’t touch the American skiers that were killing us on the downhills.

The start was pretty uneventful with no carnage, and we all settled into a “train” right away. Amazingly we didn’t have any crashes or broken equipment in our M2 category all week (that I saw anyway), which surprised me somewhat. Kudos to the race organizers and groomers for a great start area and scramble zone.

I ended up in the second pack of about 5 to 7 skiers, that also included fellow Calgarian Jeff Krar, and we had a great pace going. Kirk was in the lead group of 4 and looked really strong off the start as always.

On the 3rd lap, our group had dwindled down to Jeff, a German skier and myself vying for 6th, 7th and 8th place. I led much of the last lap and knew it would be difficult to find the jam to outsprint them. In the end Jeff was the strongest, followed by the German skier and myself in a time of about 2 hours and 2 minutes. Jeff and I were really happy with the race and even happier when we saw Kirk and found out he won another bronze. That was the 3rd bronze for Kirk. Brendan also had a rockin’ time of 2:27 and Miles was happy to have the fastest skis he had ever skied on.

The classic race went yesterday, and Marg proved she is one of the strongest classic skiers around by winning her age group for her second gold. So impressive! She also topped the 2 gold with 2 bronze medals, including the relay. Great summary on Marg’s blog: margsrace

Mikhail Kudienko of Calgary also won bronze in the men’s 45 km classic race. His race also saw things start out in a pack of 4 and after 15 km, things splintered when the Russian skier put the hammer down and he skied solo for the last 30 km.

Thanks Bob for posting our updates throughout the week and thanks to all the MitoCanada skiers who all had stellar performances and helped raise some great awareness for MitoCanada and Mitochondrial Disease.